Hmm...at the risk of butting in, my reading of Kamikaze wasn't that he was complaining that the more open-ended skill challenge system of 4e was bad because it gave too much choice or somehow allowed too much flexibility of interpretation.
It was more an observation that the system allowed for a lot of blurring of concept and stepping-on of toes. If the barbarian can smite a dragon with one blow of his axe, and bring peace to warring nations by intimidating the two leaders into submission...why bother with a bard who cannot make war, but instead focuses on peace? In fact, his example seemed to complain that it was by and large not overly difficult for a person who had invested no resources at all into a skill to achieve the same results as someone who had invested everything into it.
Spot on! I'm not even really saying that's a bad thing per se (it is completely consistent with 4e's admirable goal of avoiding boring gameplay where people sit out for a long time), it's just not what I'm looking for in D&D, where I want characters who can suck for an encounter or two and still have "balanced" classes that contribute to the overall adventure. An Illusionist might suck in combat, but rock against non-hostile NPC's, and that should be OK. Does that mean each encounter is a thing of limited duration (say, 10-15 real-world minutes on the high end)?
Great! That's awesome. I want short encounters, I want to do a dungeon in a night, I want to have a story that moves at a brisk pace, because I play this game for those adventures, not necessarily each encounter that makes it up (I care less about the cool fight scene than I do about the story that cool fight scene is a part of, so the cool fight scene, for me, should never distort or eclipse the story itself). I don't like spending an entire session tackling two or three encounters.
I don't necessarily see this as a problem myself, for the most part, since it can lead to moments of emergent comedy and allow a party otherwise unsuited to a challenge at least a chance for some success...but I can see where he's coming from. It can be frustrating to be outshined in one's specialty by a pair of dice rolls, especially if it happens with some frequency.
Like [MENTION=43019]keterys[/MENTION] 's example of the doofy fighter who became the face of the party. Sounds hilarious and awesome, right? Totally. But if you're trying to play a character who is better at Interaction than at Combat in that party...well, the game doesn't reward that investment, it doesn't support that kind of distinction very well. The fighter's as good at you at both things. He uses Athletics, you use Diplomacy, you're both good at Interaction. He has a high AC and uses a mark, you have a minor action that restores HP, you're both good at combat. When you're running a game that's focused on the encounter, this is what you want: each encounter is dynamic. When you're running a game that's focused on the adventure, this is kind of blandly dull: no one is ever in a situation they aren't well-equipped to handle.
It might be nice if there were some tiered rewards for exceeding the minimum DC though. Like if you roll 5 higher than the DC you get 2 successes...or something. The details would need hammering, so as not to warp the system completely out of functionality. But it would give someone who'd invested in that ability the potential for superior results that cannot be replicated by mere happenstance.
My first stab at this was essentially non-combat roles: "social strikers" get two successes, "social controllers" lower the DC, "social leaders" give you bonuses, "social defenders" help mitigate failures...
Part of what has piqued my interest about 5e's system is that it's going a more organic route. I don't like a simple "make everything like combat!" solution. It'd work mechanically, but it's still more abstract that I'd prefer.
Neonchameleon said:
But if someone sucks at combat like the thief you can only have fights that last a minute or two. You can't fight a dragon. You can not fight the goblin king. All your fights must be short and simple.
Not at all!
First, "sucks at combat like a thief" in my mind means "the player can make a thief that, in combat, can make some minimum contribution, but no fancy automatic tricks." So that thief is hitting the dragon with a bow from cover, or setting up flanking for a round or two, or filching items from the hoard until she comes across something she can use on the dragon, or fleeing below the precarious stalactite and taunting. Which means that the fight can totally be longer -- the thief is consistently contributing, she's just not contributing to the level of the fighter (who is going toe-to-toe with the thing and being
awesome at it), at least not on a consistent basis. After maybe 5+ rounds boredom might set in, especially if the environment is dull, but that's a pretty big slice of time. And, given that this choice is one the player made intentionally (to suck at combat), it's reinforcing her character as a sneaky thief that prefers to run away rather than fight.
There's then a question of how much longer it really needs to be. How much real-world time does a big dragon fight need to eat up? With 5 players (4 + DM) each taking about 1 minute per turn, 5 rounds is already
almost half an hour. If we cut that time in half, we've still got 10-15 minutes a pop. Do we need more breathing room than that? If it's longer than an episode of
Metalocalypse, five times longer than a normal encounter, is that not enough? What would be enough? And if there's someone at the table who isn't into the scene (because she made character choices that reinforce that she's not into a straight-up fight), how long are we going to make her half-heartedly contribute to something she's not enjoying before we get back to the exploration that she loves?
But lets say that an hour-plus-long combat is mandatory to feel significantly "epic" and we're rationally afraid that the thief's contributions are too weak to keep the player engaged for that long. Why not look at that from an angle that brings in what the thief's player
wants her character to do, rather than making her be a fighter-equivalent? Why not make the dragon a challenge that is not just combat, but that is also exploration in some way? Perhaps the dragon flies to a cavern inaccessible to all but the agile thief. Perhaps the dragon fights in darkness that only our skulky friend is good enough to navigate to turn the lights back on. Maybe there's a hidey-hole the thief can find which is good to use to hide from the breath weapon. Maybe the thief's keen eye for value can pick out the dragon-slaying arrow amongst the gold pile. Why not let the thief contribute to the combat by utilizing her exploration skills?
After all, when HP are an adventure resource rather than an encounter resource, a dragon that has run away isn't a loss...it's just a different kind of challenge to overcome.
Y'know, if I made a Samwise-style character, all doughty Charisma and determined cheer, and the DM made me fight the Goblin King for an hour, I'd feel kind of cheated, even if I sneak-attacked it to death. And if I made a Gimli-style character, all hardy Constitution and with an axe, and the DM made me endure morale-sapping dark magic for an hour, I'd be like "wtf, where is a thing I can hit with my axe?", even if I could endure it with dwarven toughness. If I choose to suck at combat and excel at interaction, I'm telling the DM that I don't want to spend an hour fighting and ignore my Charisma modifier. If I choose to rock at combat and suck at exploration, I'm telling the DM that I don't want to spend an hour of table-time roughing it in the wilderness, I'd prefer to take my luxurious caravan, and kill some bandits. When there's a five players all vying for that limited time, maybe it's not a good idea to spend an hour ignoring what one of 'em is trying to tell you.
